Achieving the highest possible performance from circuits used in third-and fourth-generation wireless systems is driving a tighter integration of previously disparate tools. Certainly, a level of software synergy is essential when designing circuits for use in today’s wireless systems that employ higher-order modulation techniques together with advanced technologies, such as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and digital predistortion (DPD) circuits, to name a few. As this white paper illustrates, AWR’s Visual System Simulator (VSS) and National Instruments’ LabVieW graphical programming environment are now co-simulating so as to better enable designers to analyze, optimize, and verify complex RF circuits, subsystems and digital signal processing within a unified framework. Before looking more closely into specific design scenarios, it is important to understand how this new and cohesive VSS/LabVIEW co-simulation environment works..
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Achieving the highest possible performance from circuits used in third-and fourth-generation wireless systems requires the seamless integration of simulation and measurement at every stage of the design process. Designers who deviate from this are at risk as the further in the design process that serious design issues are discovered, the more time (and money) it will take to remedy them. AWR’s VSS software and National Instruments’ LabVIEW significantly reduce the possibility that the latter scenario will occur, as the circuit and its components are passed back and forth seamlessly between the two tools. The result is better performance, shorter design time, and a minimum of frustration.